We explore the motivation behind large stellar surveys in Galactic astronomy, in particular, surveys that measure the photometric, phase space and abundance properties of thousands or millions of stars. These observations are essential to unravelling the sequence of events involved in galaxy formation and evolution, although disentangling key signatures from the complexity continues to be very ...

KIF4 helps mitotic chromosomes get in shape T hough chromosomes spend most of their time occupying amorphous territories in interphase nu-clei, we typically picture them as the compact X-shaped structures that form during mitosis. Chromosomes adopt this conformation to avoid becoming entangled as they segregate into daughter cells, but how mitotic chromatin condenses into the correct shape is u...

We have analyzed the equations and the formalism which allow to achieve dynamic visual perception of geometric and kinematic 3D information, for a monocular visual system without calibration. Considering the emergence of active visual systems for which we can not consider that the calibration parameters are either known or xed, we develop an alternative strategy based on the two complementary f...

Any gaseous material along our line of sight to distant quasars or, more generally, active galactic nuclei (AGNs) will absorb light according to the amounts and range of ions present. Strong absorption lines are common in rest-frame UV spectra of AGNs due to a variety of resonant transitions, for example the HI Lyman series lines (most notably Lyα λ1216) and high-ionization doublets like CIV λλ...

De Lorenzo and colleagues' report a previously undefined relationship between chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and phosphate diabetes. They also report that mean serum phosphate concentration was found to be significantly lower in CFS patients than in control subjects. They explain their findings by the hypothesis that CFS patients have a metabolic defect that is secondary to their chronic underu...

We present branching fraction and CP asymmetry results for a variety of B decays based on up to 56.4 fb −1 collected by the BABAR experiment running near the Υ (4S) resonance at the PEP-II e + e − B-factory. The results presented in this paper are based on an integrated luminosity of up to 56.4 fb −1 collected at the Υ (4S) resonance with the BABAR detector [1] at the PEP-II asymmetric e + e − ...

K inesins are a large family of plus-end–directed microtubule motor proteins. They are involved in many cellular processes, including organ-ellar traffi cking to cell division and regulation of the microtubule cytoskeleton. Jonathon Howard began studying kine-sins shortly after kinesin-1 was discovered (1). Thanks to his efforts, the motor protein fi eld has made major strides toward understand...

M icrotubule-based kinesin motor proteins have many cellular functions, including the transport of various cargoes to different parts of the cell (1). Kanai et al. uncover an unexpected , motor-independent function for one kinesin, KIF13B, in promoting the endocy-tosis of a membrane receptor that regulates cholesterol levels in the blood (2). There are 45 kinesins in the human genome, and the f...

ells only exit metaphase if all their chromosomes are both attached and under tension from microtubules of the bipolar spindle, which pull on sister kinetochores that face in opposite directions. report that tension creation requires Mtw1p and associated proteins, and is sensed by the conserved Ipl1p/Aurora B protein kinase. In the current model for Ipl1p action, many chromosomes initially have...

The panoramic integral-field spectrograph SAURON is currently being used to map the stellar kinematics, gaseous kinematics, and stellar populations of a large number of early-type galaxies and bulges. Here, we describe SAURON observations of cold stellar disks embedded in spheroids (NGC 3384, NGC 4459, NGC 4526), we illustrate the kinematics and ionization state of large-scale gaseous disks (NG...